8. Relating Theory and Practice In Adult Second language Acquisition

Applications

In this chapter we will attempt to make the difficult transition from theory to practice. This will be done by describing what appears to me to be an "ideal" second language teaching program in general terms. The program contains several components, some of which are obligatory and some of which are optional.

Most language teaching programs, if they are subdivided into components, divide up into the "four skills", speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Evidence from a variety of sources indicates that this may not be the optimal division. First, in every program I have been associated with, teachers who are asked to focus on just one of the four skills or even two (oral versus written), complain that such divisions are artificial. They find it impossible to focus on just one skill and ignore the others. Second, Oller, in a series of studies, reports that "it is difficult to find any unique meaningful variance in all of the diverse language tests that have been studied and which can be attributed to any one of the traditionally recognized four skills" (Oller, 1976a, p. 144; see also Oller, 1976b; Oller and Hinofotis, 1976). In other words, there is no clear evidence for a "reading" factor, a "speaking" factor, etc. Also, there is no evidence for an oral modality factor, as opposed to a written modality factor. Our research on "Monitor Theory" is also consistent with the idea that the four skills are not the primary division: Oller (1976a) has noted that error analysis "reveals a high degree of correspondence between the structures generated in widely different tasks, e.g. translation, oral imitation, and spontaneous speech" (p. 144). While this generalization is based on data gathered before "Monitor" research was reported, our results have been quite consistent with this generalization. We find

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